West Ham's Manuel Lanzini has been charged over diving to win a penalty against Stoke City, the second Premier League player to be targeted under new rules aimed at stamping out cheating.
The 24-year-old...

Businessman Farhad Moshiri has insisted he purchased a major stake in Everton solely with his own funds after a BBC probe into his relationship with Alisher Usmanov, a shareholder in Premier League rivals...

In a milestone for artificial intelligence, a computer has beaten a human champion at a strategy game that requires "intuition" rather than brute processing power to prevail, its makers said Wednesday.
Dubbed...

Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity is about to celebrate its 100th anniversary, and his revolutionary hypothesis has withstood the test of time, despite numerous expert attempts to find flaws.
"Einstein...

The remains of five archbishops of Canterbury have been accidentally discovered by builders in a hidden tomb beneath a London church, site developers said yesterday.
Some 20 lead coffins were discovered...

The first major retrospective of gay British art opens this week at the Tate Britain gallery in London, featuring a portrait of Oscar Wilde next to his prison cell door.
"Queer British Art 1861-1967"...

From Walkmans to iPhones and classic cars to robotic arms, London's new Design Museum will offer a journey through the world of contemporary design when it opens its doors to the public next week.
The...

Harry Potter fans were buzzing with excitement Saturday as "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child", a stage play that imagines the fictional boy wizard as a grown-up father of three, opened in London.
After...

World News

Afghan intelligence officials have broken up a cell which was plotting to kill President Hamid Karzai, arresting six people in Kabul whom they claimed were affiliated with al Qaida and the Haqqani militant group, it has been revealed.

The cell included one of Mr Karzai's bodyguards as well as a professor at Kabul University and three college students, intelligence service spokesman Latifullah Mashal said.

Mr Mashal described the cell as the "most sophisticated and educated group in Kabul" and said it had assisted Pakistani militants sent to the Afghan capital to carry out terror attacks. He did not say when they were arrested.

He said the group, which was also allegedly planning attacks in Kabul, the US and Europe, were recruited by an Egyptian and a Bangladeshi based in Pakistan.

Afghan officials have been increasingly vocal in publicly accusing Pakistan and its ISI intelligence agency of maintaining ties with militants, including the Haqqani group.

Nigeria's president vowed to bring terrorism "under control" as he visited the bombed headquarters of the United Nations in his country, a day after at least 19 people died in an attack claimed by a radical Muslim sect.

President Goodluck Jonathan walked amid the debris left behind after Friday's attack in Nigeria's capital, Abuja.

Mr Jonathan toured the shattered reception area of the building, where a suicide bomber crashed an explosive-laden car before detonating his bombs.

He promised to address the threat posed by the sect known locally as Boko Haram, though so far his weakened government has been unable to stop the group from carrying out assassinations and bombings at will in Africa's most populous nation.

"Boko Haram is a local group linked up with terrorist activities," Mr Jonathan told journalists gathered at the site. "As a government, we are working on this and we will bring it under control."

The president did not elaborate on the statement as his aides hustled him off into a convoy of armoured Mercedes Benz sedans, police trucks and motorcycles.

Security appeared tighter than normal in Abuja, about 550 miles from the country's megacity of Lagos.

It would be "inconceivable" for Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to remain in charge of Libya, Prime Minister David Cameron has said.

But Mr Cameron ruled out regime change, saying it was up to the Libyan people to decide "who governs them and how they are governed".

The Prime Minister made his comments after he was asked by senior Tory MP Edward Leigh whether a deal could now be struck with the Libyan leader if he was prepared to implement a ceasefire.

Mr Leigh said: "Would you confirm that our mission is entirely humanitarian and there is the genesis of a deal here if Gaddafi is just prepared to hold what he has in Tripoli and we could then achieve a compromise and an end to this war?"

Mr Cameron replied that Gaddafi could "play his part" in helping the United Nations to enforce Resolution 1973, but in the end he would have to go.

The Prime Minister told MPs in the Commons: "Britain's role is very clearly set out in UN Resolution 1973, which is to work with others to stop the attacks on civilians.

"It is not about regime change, it is for the people of Libya to decide who governs them and how they are governed.

"We have also always been clear that if Gaddafi declared a ceasefire where he was actually removing his troops from the towns and cities that he invaded, then clearly that would be playing his part in resolving resolution 1973.

"Where I have always gone on and said I can't see a future for Libya where Gaddafi is still in place, is for the very simple reason that if you look at what this man has done over the last 100 days, is that although he has had every opportunity to pull back and put in place a ceasefire, all he has done is more shelling, attacking, murdering, sniping his own citizens."

Foreign Secretary William Hague had earlier hailed the issue of an international arrest warrant for Gaddafi, saying it showed he had "lost all legitimacy".

The eurozone's debt crisis poses the biggest single threat to UK financial stability, the Bank of England's new financial watchdog has warned.

Despite the limited direct exposure of UK banks to debt in beleaguered countries such as Greece, the impact on nations such as Germany and France would have a knock-on effect and lead to a tightening of bank funding conditions.

The minutes of the first meeting of the interim Financial Policy Committee set out a number of risks to the stability of the UK financial system, saying: "Sovereign and banking sector strains in some vulnerable euro-area economies were the most material and immediate threat to UK financial stability."

Among recommendations, banks will be told to retain more of their profits as they face threats from the eurozone debt crisis and the possibility that homeowners may not be able to repay their mortgages. It said in the medium-term banks face a potential problem from the number of businesses and homeowners that are struggling to repay their loans or mortgages and warned that banks may have made inadequate provision for bad debts.

The committee, which has been set up to oversee the country's financial stability in the wake of the credit crunch, advised banks to hoard more money during the good times to prepare them for any shocks ahead. Members discussed possible measures to limit dividends paid to shareholders or to rule that they are paid in newly created shares rather than cash to help banks build their capital reserves.

The success of an internet company has combined with a drop in oil prices to send the US stock market higher.

Shares of social networking company LinkedIn jumped 109% to 94.25 US dollars on the first day they began trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

The debut is seen as a preview of other social networking sites that are expected to start trading during the next year. The list of candidates includes the online messaging service Twitter, game maker Zynga, and the biggest social network of all, Facebook.

"LinkedIn represents the first opportunity for the average investor to participate in what looks like a lasting, powerful trend of social media," said Lawrence Creatura, a portfolio manager at Federated Investors. "They're frothy with excitement, and that's being imputed into the share price."

LinkedIn finished Thursday with a gigantic price-to-earnings ratio of 554, a valuation reminiscent of internet stocks during the late 1990s technology bubble. By comparison, the average price-to-earnings ratio of tech companies in the S&P 500 index like Apple and Google is 15.

Sumeet Jain, a principal with venture investing firm CMEA Capital, said LinkedIn's IPO suggests that the number of mergers and acquisitions will increase this year as social networking companies grow, a potential boon for the stock market.

The Foreign Office has urged all British nationals to leave Syria in the wake of the latest unrest unless they have a pressing need to remain in the country.

In updated travel advice, the Foreign Office said that following the "rapid deterioration" in the security situation Britons should get out while commercial flights were still available.

"Given the situation on the ground, it is highly unlikely that the British Embassy would be able to provide a normal consular service in the event of a further breakdown of law and order and increased violent civil disorder," it said.